1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to hand-held shields for upper-body protection, and more particularly to totally see-through or substantially transparent bullet-resistant shields that are optionally mountable vertically on the side of counter top surfaces for standing or ducking behind and removable for quick portable hand-held bullet interception from any direction.
2. Background
The news media reports daily of "drive-by shootings," bank and store holdups, cadackings, burglaries, homicides, and the shooting of police officers who approach suspicious vehicles or enter buildings housing an armed suspect. Police departments, to date, have been using non-ballistic transparent riot shields, expensive non-see-through ballistic shields with limited viewing lens plates, ballistic faceshields and bullet resistant vests made from a wide variety of armor such as ceramics, glass, reinforced plastics, polyaramids, polyethylenes, polycarbonates, aluminum alloys, and steel. Such armored products for law enforcement is commercially available from various companies. U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,703, granted Sep. 7, 1993 to Roberts et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,394, granted Jun. 23, 1987 to Martino describe two types of protective shields.
However, there remains an acute need in the public service sector, particularly for police officers as well as in the workplace and private community, for a see-through or transparent hand-held, portable shield of manageable weight, that is moderately priced which not only protects people from non-ballastic projectiles such as rocks but now provides as disclosed, bullet resistance with an unlimited see-through (no lens) view of a suspect attacking, running, walking, or hiding while carrying or shooting a gun.